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“That was rough,” she said in a low tone as we walked back to our vehicles. “Do you think she knew about what he was doing?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say no.”
She stopped next to the driver’s door of Bess’s car, and I stood next to her in silence for a few seconds.
“Thanks for coming with me,” she said softly.
I met her gaze, the gold flecks in her eyes shining bright in the sunlight.
“I need to know you’re safe,” I said. “This is all really hard for me, but I’m trying to give you the space you need to do your work and make sure you’re safe, too.”
“I know. And look, I know things are…I’m not sure how to say it, but if you’ve changed your mind about me”
I cut her off, taking her hand in mine. “I haven’t changed my mind. You drive me crazy with your stubbornness, but I still…yeah, my feelings are the same.”
“I’m trying to give you the space you need to do your work, too.”
I squeezed her hand. “Thanks.”
“Why don’t we go back to the newsroom and eat that cake?”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “Let’s do that.”
“I’ll even buy you a root beer from the vending machine.”
“Deal.”
I released her hand and she gave me one more smile over her shoulder before getting into Bess’s car. I glared at the Meechams’ house as I walked back to my vehicle, eager for Avon to be far away from here.
Though I wasn’t sure the Meecham family had hit rock bottom yet, I knew one thing for sure—if they planned to mess with Avon, they’d have to go through me first.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Avon
Bess was glowing with pride when she hung up the phone at her desk.
“There’s a line at the newspaper machine outside of Tipper’s,” she gushed. “A line. All those people waiting because they know we go to press today and the circulation people will be filling that machine with this week’s paper within the next hour. Never in my wildest dreams did I see that happening.”
I warmed, knowing all my hard work on follow-up coverage would be worth it. The Chronicle was the only local newspaper. We had to have the latest news before the state and national outlets did.
After basking in the good news for a moment, I sent a text to the circulation manager, asking him to bring extra copies for that stop on the route and to make sure every copy that went out got counted.
Our circulation was up by more than a hundred subscriptions from last week. It didn’t seem like much, but I was proud of every single one.
“Oh!” Bess practically howled as she read an incoming text. “Tipper said the guy from the national nightly news is in line! He sent me a picture! Pete would be so tickled.”
I smiled to myself, wondering how I could ever go back to a regular job after this. I’d never felt such a sense of accomplishment or that my work mattered. I couldn’t even walk down Main Street without people coming up to thank me for my coverage of the misappropriated funds. This week I’d also done a feature story on a woman who was retiring after fifty-two years as a lunch lady at the grade school. When I took a photo of her, surrounded by smiling first graders giving her a group hug, I’d felt the same sense of pride I had over the line at the newspaper machine.
My phone buzzed with an incoming text and I looked down at the screen.
Grady: How are you?
Avon: Still alive. How about you?
A Sven’s Beard detective had meticulously dusted Pete’s truck for fingerprints last week, and he’d come up with a match on the passenger side door. Matt Meecham was in jail now, and I breathed easier knowing the threatening calls and vandalism were over. Grady, on the other hand, checked on me at least every hour now that he no longer had an officer watching me around the clock.
Grady: Eagerly awaiting the new edition of the paper.
Avon: I may know someone who could deliver one…
Grady: Is she a hot redhead?
Benji walked into the newsroom with a stack of newspapers fresh off the press, delivering one to every desk. I picked mine up, soaking in the fresh smell and warm pages. I was the only one with coverage about how much money had been laundered over the last fourteen years and how the people inside City Hall were reacting to it.
“Good gravy!” Bess cried from her desk.
I looked up from the paragraph I was reading over to Bess, her eyes wide and her chin practically on her desk.
“What?” I asked.
“This is an absolute disaster! How in the world did this happen?”
“Bess, what?” I asked, aggravated.
Her gaze met mine in an angry glare. “Page A5.”
I turned to the page, which had wedding announcements on top and obituaries on the bottom. And at the very top of the page, I saw what Bess was so upset about.
